By The Star Staff
Popular Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate Jesús Manuel Ortiz González on Monday described certain former PDP members as “disgruntled” individuals who have turned their backs on the PDP because they lost elections.
He was talking about former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, who is now saying she will support the Alliance between the Puerto Rican Independence Party and Citizen Victory Movement (MVC by its initials in Spanish), San Juan mayoral candidate Manuel Natal Albelo of the MVC, political analyst Néstor Duprey and Rafael Cox Alomar, who once ran for resident commissioner under the PDP and is now working for Alliance gubernatorial candidate Juan Dalmau Ramírez.
“I will tell you what pushed them to leave: They lost,” Ortiz said in a radio interview (Radio Isla)
Ortiz said his support among PDP members includes those who favor the commonwealth status as it is and those who support moving the current status to a freely associated state.
“In my working team, I have fellow sovereignists, state-liberals, and autonomists who are there with us fighting because we believe in an ideal, and there are more things that unite us than divide us,” the lawmaker candidate said. “What happens is that when you aspire to a position and you lose, it makes you rebel against the people who once helped you. That is what we see today.”
The PDP president defended the commonwealth status even though the option will not appear on the ballot for the status plebiscite on Nov. 5. The PDP is urging supporters to leave the ballot blank.
“What we defend is good government. We defend public policies of quality of life for the people, and our instrument to achieve that is the commonwealth status,”Ortiz said. “If in the end there is a serious process that takes place, where all the players participate at the table, the country will vote because we are democratic and we believe in democracy.”
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